What Me Think

By Lord Mudgeon McGrumpypants

"Rapier Mâché"

Like many people in the SCA, my imagination as a child
was captured by the great cinematic swashbucklers—Errol
Flynn, Basil Rathbone, and their contemporaries—so when
I first joined the SCA, I was terribly excited about getting
into Rapier Combat (or "fencing", as it was called back then).

Then I actually saw some SCA fencing. And I couldn't help feeling a little
disappointed, because something was missing.

Stairs, for one thing. A really good movie swordfight had to involve stairs at
some point, preferably a circular staircase. And tables to jump on, and chandeliers
to swing from, and of course the de rigeur candelabrum for one of the participants
to swing at and cleave all the candles in twain without knocking any of them
over, like a magician whisking away a tablecloth to leave the expensive china
dishes undisturbed. Which never works either, I've discovered.

Okay, so none of that is terribly historical, but it's no less historical than the
injection-molded plastic sword-case-on-wheels that an increasing number of SCA
fencers are using. Get a grip, guys; period fencers didn't cart around their entire
armories with them. They carried a sword, or possibly two if they wanted to
impress the ladies with a little "double deuce" action. If somebody came at them,
they didn't say "Oh, hold on there, my good fellow, let me make sure we're using
the same sort of weapon, eh what?" They used what they had at hand.

Part of the problem is that SCA fencing is derived from modern Olympic fencing,
which follows closely behind golf and curling in the competition for Stupidest
Sport Ever Invented—not only are you required to wear an outfit that makes you
look like a crash test dummy, you have to move only forwards or backwards, like a
Rock-Em-Sock-Em Robot; if the other guy starts to attack, you have to parry his
attack instead of striking first to win; you can't use your off hand; and if you don't
lunge with deep-knee bends that would
put a Cossack dancer to shame, you're
considered to have poor form.

To the SCA's credit, though, they
did get rid of the stupidest rules. You
can wear actual clothing, you can move
two-dimensionally, you don't have to
give your opponent "right of way", you
can use your off hand for some things,
and "form" in SCA fencing is what
you fill out to get an authorization card.

Still, read some period fencing manuals and
you'll realize how much of their instruction runs
contrary to the SCA rapier combat rules.
For example, diGrassi mentions delivering
blows with the edge of the weapon. Whoops,
that's forbidden in the SCA ("Chopping or
hacking blows are never permitted"). Silver
writes of wrestling one's opponent to
gain the advantage, but the SCA rules state
that while "the gloved hand may be used to parry, it shall not be used to push, grasp
or strike an opponent", which pretty much rules out wrestling. I can't read Fiore
dei Liberi's Italian poetry in Flos Duellatorum, but the pictures make it pretty
clear that some of his moves are designed to wrest the opponent's sword out of his
grasp, which, again, is verboten in the SCA (and he seems to be fairly fond of that
good old WWF action himself). And so on, and so forth.

It's apparent that these fencing luminaries, upon seeing the grotesquely watered-
down corruption of their art as practiced in the Society, would join our heavy
weapons fighters in their ridicule of SCA rapier combatants.

Why such scorn from the fighters? Well, to begin with, there's the whole
"macho" thing, in that putting on fifty pounds of armor and beating on each other
with sticks is macho, while swishing around with car antennas isn't. But probably
the biggest strike against SCA fencers can be summed up in three words:

Rubber Band Guns.

As long as you guys are using those, you're not going to get any respect. Face
it, they're children's toys sold at Ren Faires. But let's take a look at what else is
wrong with them, shall we?

First, take single combat. Fortunately, the rules forbid firing a rubber band gun
in single combat (at least in Trimaris). It is, after all, rapier combat, not pistol
combat. But if you have a pistol, and somebody comes at you with a sword, you
would have to be an absolute moron to use your pistol as a parrying device, since
a good solid blow from a real sword could break off the lock, shatter the barrel
bands or dent the barrel itself, turning your deadly firearm into an expensive
paperweight.

They can be fired in melée, unfortunately, because
somebody apparently didn't grasp the concept that "rapier
combat" should involve rapiers (which class of weapons generally
doesn't include firearms). Be that as it may, when you
have certain fencers who apparently lack the neural responsiveness
to feel someone pressing a piece of steel against
them until it bends, getting them to notice a mere rubber
band in the heat of battle seems a Sisyphean task indeed.

The Trimarian Rubber Band Gun rules acknowledge this problem, and suggest
that the victim be informed that he has been shot, which reduces the whole thing to
an elementary-school "Bang bang! I shot you, you're dead!" level.

Now, this particular problem could easily be solved. Instead of using a children's
toy invented in the mid-1800s, why not get some enterprising craftsman to manufacture
paintball guns designed to duplicate the look of real flintlock pistols? The
impact of a paintball is certainly more noticeable than a rubber band—and it leaves
incontrovertible evidence of the shot's accuracy, which cannot be denied by even
the thickest-skinned individuals (unless they also suffer from colorblindness so
severe that it would impede their ability to dress themselves).

But since paintball guns would be just as stupid, perhaps they should just work
on manufacturing portable staircases instead.